Forty-one animal-themed spells of dubious use to the discerning
wizard, along with some notes on various animals of the Wampus Country. Tome 41: Theriospheric Transfigurations
is a compilation of material from the Wampus Country blog supplemented
with new material. The spell descriptions therein are for use with
Labyrinth Lord or any similar grey-haired game, or can provide
inspiration for any system which tolerates some silliness in its magic.
Wampus Country is a fantasy frontier setting of tall tales, humorous action, and winking satire. As such, the content of Theriospheric Transfigurations may be incompatible with Very Serious Campaigns.

Check it out, it's Pay What you Want, and if you like it, I'm sure a donation would be appreciated.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Thirty-Five years ago, Gary Gygax wrote The Keep on the Borderlands as an introductory module for Basic D&D, to replace Mike Carr's In Search of the Unknown for inclusion in the basic box set. It was different from most existing modules in two notable ways. Firstly, it described with some detail a home base for the players, the Keep in the name of the module. Secondly, instead of a providing a fairly static dungeon for the players to explore, it provided a more dynamic one ruled by different factions.

As such an influential module, it has spawned numerous imitators as well as a reboot from TSR/WOTC themselves. Most of these provide far more detail than the original, easy enough since the orignal was a scant 32 pages. The Sinister Stone of Sakkara is Autarch's attempt at producing an homage, meant for their Adventurer Conqueror King System (aka ACKS) but with the exception of armor class and some classes, is more or less Basic/Expert D&D with a focus on bookkeeping. And that sort of focus in one display here, with a large amount of detail in some areas and sparseness in others.

Midnight Oliviah is a module for first edition (and OSRIC and Advanced Edition Character Labyrinth Lord) from Lloyd Metcalf Inc, meant for 3rd to 4th level characters. I bought the PDF, but it's also a print product. It's described as a "mini mod", but at $5 and almost 30 pages, albeit single column, it's a bit more than that, but still likely representing a single play sessions.

Oliviah is also the name of an NPC, a tavern owner who hires the PCs to work as security for an auction of a special suit of magical armor . An artifact, actually. However, much to their dismay, part of that armor was stolen, so they must track down the thief. This requires a small amount of detective work, but after talking to a few people, they are pointed in the right direction of the suspect. Which involves a dungeon crawl of a necromancer's lair.

Monster Miscellany #01 is the first (presumably) in a series of small supplements from James Mishler Games introducing new monster for Labyrinth Lord. How small? Well, four monsters, one to a page. But each page is packed with a huge amount of detail (and text). While Labyrinth Lord is a Basic and Expert D&D retro-clone, the format here is more akin to the monstrous manuals of 2nd edition of AD&D, with sections on ecology, organization, where they are found, and in some cases, unique examples of the monster.

Miscellany certain describes the variety of the four different monsters, they share nothing in common. The first is the abnokh, a type of minor demon. They are tall, red, and emaciated to the point of looking skeletal. They hunt humans to eat and other unpleasant things. They are not terribly tough though, with only 3 hit dice. However they do hunt in packs, so could be a challenge. They remind me a bit of the Xill.

About This Site

As a long time D&D fan who was lured back and then disappointed by the 5e announcement, I was thrilled to discover there was a whole bunch of people making products for old school versions of the game, either adventures and sourcebooks, or variations of the old rules.

But there was little in the way of news about new products, other than scattered comments on various message boards and sometimes not even that. So I thought I'd collect all the news I could find, as well as write the occasional review.

If you happen to have any news pertaining to OSR products, drop me a line at trancejeremy at yahoo.com